Thank you again, Mr. Chair.
You're all such excellent advocates, and this is going to increase awareness. Just talking about this and having things like this televised is going to increase awareness for concussions.
I keep thinking about the comments about the smaller towns and the minor hockey associations, and how there's nobody really around when something like that happens. Someone will just say to wake him up every hour. I think it might have been Anne who said that.
I think about the level of support, knowledge and technology at the higher levels. As I said last week when Mr. Dryden was here, we have to find a way to filter that down, either through training or....
Anne, you were talking about equipment and the $1,000 helmet. You said, “I would gladly spend the money to keep him safe.” What a great lesson. My son plays competitive hockey, so I try to buy the best helmet. I assume that the highest price tag is the best helmet. I will say that I really hadn't considered that it wasn't until you said that. It's astonishing.
However, I will say we can't have the sports stores held to having that ability to.... We expect someone who's fitting our kids with shoulder pads to know what size, but we really can't put the onus on them for that.
Somebody said something about CSA. Maybe we need to get to a higher standard. I come from the era of the old Jofa helmet, which looked like a cardboard box. It's much, much better than it was, but the players are bigger, stronger and faster, and they're hurling themselves at each other because, as Matthew said, kids look up to the NHL players and play the game the way those players play it. That seems to be the way it is.
Maybe we need to get to a higher standard. You made a lot of recommendations and I didn't get them all jotted down, but if you are able and you want to submit them to us in a list form, I know it's very important that we hear your suggestions. I know I'm mixing up everybody's testimony because it's all coming at us, but I like the idea of maybe a higher test than being CSA-approved.
I looked at my helmet the other day, since being named to this committee, and it said 2009. That's gentlemen's hockey, and I'm more likely to do damage to myself by falling into the boards than being pushed, but my 2009 helmet is no longer good by 2012 standards.
There's a lot we can learn here. If you have recommendations and you want to throw them out there, that would be great.
I'm sorry, that wasn't really a question, Anne. I was just commenting on some of the things you said. You also implied that when Carter was first diagnosed with a concussion, you realized that he may have had several more before then, but you just thought they were headaches.
